Company Health and Wellness : Employee Wellness Program Ideas: Safety and Wellness

Other departments within a business will likely focus on related areas of employee safety and injury prevention. Wellness activities are a natural partner to many other human resource, employee motivation, and safety programs. Body mechanics, ergonomics, and safe on the job practices are three areas which may be coordinated together.
• Soft Tissue Sprains & Strains: This injury category continues to remain the number one monetary loss for workers’ compensation. Many healthcare insurance dollars are also invested on back pain, other sprains, and strains. Wellness and safety efforts can focus on:
• Warm up stretches before beginning work or periodic stretching during work. These can do much to prevent soft tissue injury. Give training to work groups so they may start a stretching program. These groups can then continue on their own.
• The Corporate Wellness Program Committee might consider contracting a fitness professional to come in and conduct stretching “refreshers” for employee groups throughout the year.
• Provide body mechanics training on an annual basis or more frequently if possible. These training sessions should focus on work related tasks and safety, as well as feature a segment on home tasks and body safety.
• Partner with your employer’s workers’ compensation carrier to help  in offering body mechanics training, job safety analysis, and other preventative services which can help employees work safer, smarter, and avert injury.
• Launch a safety issues suggestion box. Encourage workers to report safety and/or injury issues. Help upper management to establish policy to recognize and reward workers who offer safety suggestions, support tips, and solution ideas.
• A periodic presentation featuring a local medical provider approaching such subject matters as safe body mechanics, recovering from a back injury, appropriate spine care, etc.
• Partner with upper management and supervisor teams to recognize and reward work groups who are efficacious with safety and injury prevention.
• The ergonomics of an employees’ workstation/work place design is valuable and applicable to every group.
• Provide ergonomic training opportunities to interested workers volunteers. These individuals can then help  other workers to assess their work areas for safety, comfort, and injury prevention.
• It is often more effective to have an observer evaluate workers for helpful and friendly comfort suggestions rather than it is for individuals to evaluate themselves.
• One suggestion is to have employees remind one another about correct posture, to take breaks, to stop and do quick mini stretches, etc.
• Take before and after photos of work areas as changes are made. This will help to corroborate how small adjustment changes can often make large comfort changes.
• Partner with the employer’s workers’ compensation carrier to help advance ergonomic policies and practices and to provide employee training.